Figure 2.

Formation and mechanical properties of supercharged albumin nanosheets at oil–water interfaces, in the presence of co-surfactant PFBC. (A) cBSA forms viscoelastic nanosheets at the oil–water interface. (B) aBSA forms viscous nanosheets at the oil–water interface. (C) In the presence of PFBC, supercharged albumins, including aBSA, form elastic nanosheets. (D) Time sweeps of the evolution of interfacial storage moduli of Novec 7500/PBS interfaces during the assembly of native BSA, cBSA, and aBSA, with and without co-surfactant PFBC (10 μg/mL in the oil phase). (E) Corresponding interfacial shear storage moduli extracted from frequency sweeps at an oscillating amplitude of 10^–4 rad. (F) Residual elasticities σ_R (%) extracted from the fits of stress relaxation experiments at 0.5% strain. Note that protein conformations shown in (A–C) are only intended to illustrate the proposed structure of nanosheets and are not accurate representations of associated protein conformations.